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Subbulakshmi S

S Subbulakshmi is a Drawing Teacher at the Government Higher Primary School, Thonachikoppal, Mysore. She has a Masters in History and in Fine Arts from Hampi University. With a rich experience in teaching for the past 15 years she has persistently involved herself in many co-curricular activities like storytelling, dance and science exhibition models making for primary and higher primary school students. She is also adept in toy making and working with a variety of materials and designs. Her experience in participating in the arts integrated master resource training programme conducted by IFA this year, has triggered this current project.

She believes that knowledge formulations happen when educators and learners share in a common journey, which creates connections that build relationships. Educators and learners begin to understand how life experiences impact personal learning experiences. Her project ‘Talk Story’ is an indigenous pedagogical teaching strategy that encourages learners to develop confidence to incorporate life experiences within the classroom in their curricula content through use of storytelling though gestures, movements, puppets and props. It encourages students to grasp both the meanings and applications of the content that they are studying and build a cumulative analysis of collective thought through a consensual process. The idea of ‘Talk Story’ can compliment or be an alternative to the chalk and talk form of pedagogical process.

The outcome of this project will be a series of presentations of such stories by students in a festival organised by the school for the community. The deliverables of the project to IFA will be images and audio- video documentation of the programmes.

This grant was made possible with support from Goethe Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore and Citi India.